It's just life, but from a different perspective

Main menu

Post navigation

The “Goodland Van Gogh”

Here’s a bit of artistic Americana, captured just off I-70 in Goodland, Kansas:

Why, you might ask, did I wander here? Like many (I’d guess most) visitors, I was driving home from an out-of-town trip via I-70. I needed to stop for some gas (not a lot of gas stations in the middle of Kansas), and happened to drive by this on my way into the heart of Goodland.

Granted, a 24′ by 32′ reproduction of a van Gogh painting isn’t what you’d expect to see in the middle of the prairie, so I did a bit of research on it. It turns out that this artwork was put up in 2001, at a cost of $150,000. Part of a project of Canadian painter Cameron Cross, it was intended to be one of seven similar works spread across the globe, all based on van Gogh’s sunflower paintings from the late 1880s — so far, only three have been erected (the other two are in Altona, Canada and Emerald, Australia).

As it turns out, my accidental timing was perfect — this summer, the painting was taken down from its easel and repainted. It was put back where it belongs a bit over a week before I passed through. So the new paint job should be good until 2023 or so — swing by if you’re passing through (as you can see, parking is no problem!).